Graduation Thesis Muyang: Difference between revisions

From XPUB & Lens-Based wiki
(Created page with "== Introduction == My interest in toxic and toxicity came from a conversation with an astrologer who learned about my powerful energies stemming from the Taurus-Scorpio axis. My teenage and romantic years were characterized by countless self-harms and controlling, toxic, dark love affairs, and he suggested that dealing with relationships with others was always at the forefront of my mind. Later he said that my Jupiter in the 11th house meant I could enjoy "a great gather...")
 
No edit summary
 
(5 intermediate revisions by the same user not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
== Introduction ==
== A for Anus ==
My interest in toxic and toxicity came from a conversation with an astrologer who learned about my powerful energies stemming from the Taurus-Scorpio axis. My teenage and romantic years were characterized by countless self-harms and controlling, toxic, dark love affairs, and he suggested that dealing with relationships with others was always at the forefront of my mind. Later he said that my Jupiter in the 11th house meant I could enjoy "a great gathering of different guests".
In Chinese slang, the anus is referred to as "chrysanthemum" due to their similar appearances. In Chinese culture, the chrysanthemum is associated with "death" and "sacrifice ritual". Both are almost taboo topics in China and are not to be mentioned or touched. In my youth, I felt ashamed of my fantasy of wanting to be a "bottom", and feeling "guilty towards my parents and country(China)", to the extent that I only started exploring my anus very late.
 
My encounter with Paul B. Preciado was because he wrote a series of articles during COVID-19, published in the Chinese edition of Artforum. My undergraduate tutor, Luciano Zubillaga, in a film, linked the anus with a poem by Rilke (<nowiki>http://rainer-maria-rilke.de/020095dieuhrensonah.html</nowiki>). Here, Luciano explored the anus as a zero point for the deterritorialization of the heterosexual body, its pleasure serving as a metaphor for (sexual) communism.


During the year and more I spent in the Netherlands, I have felt more lonely than at any other time in my life. Despite never having had many friends, I felt a great distance from my white classmates. My first two decades were spent under the strict censorship of the Chinese government, and suddenly the white institution PZI gave me the freedom to create. I had never encountered such a politically left-leaning group, and I thought I could be friends with them. Outside of PZI, I have no white friends. It's only when I enter the white space of PZI that white people suddenly step in and "save" me from my own race. Chatting with my Asian friends was the only time I really had an emotional connection with the outside world. I'm slowly realizing that the freedom the white establishment brought me was illusory. Freedom still depended on my own slow and continuous personal struggle. This struggle remains connected to concepts such as Asianness and Chineseness. I need to ease my loneliness by gathering and looking to the horizon of the emergence of future community.
Upon arriving in the Netherlands, I faced the violence of being racialized and eroticized on Grindr. The sentiment of "no Asians!" has been adopted as a slogan of a white supremacist gay "community" that coerces Asian men to occupy an unsexy, undesirable position, seen as soft, effeminate, and poorly endowed—in other words, to occupy bottomhood. On Chinese social media Red, many Chinese gays and women have shown their disgust at the lack of masculinity of Asian men. They show that they don't hate "yellow fever" because they also only like white men, calling themselves "white fever". Within the Asian community, I have long been marginalized for behaviors such as dyeing my hair and wearing makeup.


As a youth growing up in the most developed region of China during a time of globalization, I had limited knowledge about China and did not feel connected to it. When I entered a British university in China, I had a memorable experience in a communications class where a teacher from the Netherlands boldly claimed that Chinese students were unable to think about problems like Western people. Throughout the semester, he solely presented Western theories in class. Predictably, I did not succeed in the course. Most Chinese students dislike theories, as they perceive them to be disconnected from their daily lives. This is clearly related to the decontextualization of the theory. In ''The Creolization of Theory'', Shu-mei Shih suggests that the fundamental reason for the decontextualization of theories is actually that in American academia, the acceptance process of theory has filtered out the externality and peculiarity of theory, turning it into a textbook-style critical theory and reproducing it within the academy.
The fear of femininity is the common link between misogyny and homophobia, reflected in various social and cultural practices. Beneath this hatred and anxiety, in the modern or colonial context, lies a stigmatized anus, demonized as immoral and associated with transgression or stupidity. Asians and the anus are seen as the opposition of whiteness and the phallus, blacks as bottoms are seen as devalued and enslaved, and the West is simultaneously intertwined with racism and homophobia as aversion to the anus is transferred to the position of the subject of life. Revisiting Paul B. Preciado's notion of "anal castration" is necessary:<blockquote>The boys-of-castrated-anus established a community of what they called City, State, Fatherland, whose power and administrative authority excluded all those bodies whose anus remained open: women are doubly perforated as a result of their anuses and vaginas [with] their entire body transformable into a uterine cavity capable of housing future citizens; however also the bodies of faggots, which the power was not able to castrate; bodies that repudiated what others would consider anatomic evidence and that creates an aesthetic of life from this mutation.</blockquote>Preciado has challenged the focus on the penis in Freudian theory by introducing the concept of "anal castration," questioning the validity of "castration anxiety" and "penis envy." The anus of Asian men is seen as a tool for white penis pleasure during sex, but it does not produce pleasure in itself.Challenging white dominance in sex requires a re-examination of the anus and its pleasures.


Despite not experiencing complete colonization by Western powers, China has undergone a rapid process of globalization. As a result, China consistently finds itself in a situation similar to that of post-colonial societies. I have come to the realization that employing feminist theory or minority theory can assist the Chinese people in navigating the challenges posed by globalization. The book ''The Creolization of Theory'' has been instrumental in guiding my thinking about how minorities and marginalized groups within Western contexts can engage in theoretical discussions with the larger systems they encounter, while also developing theories rooted in their own lived experiences.
== G for Grindr ==
In European countries, gay male cruising has been completely transformed by capitalism into Grindr, where it has become focused on cruising for money. Almost no trace remains of whatever anti-capitalist ethos there once was in cruising. It appears that a similar trend is rapidly emerging in China as well, as gay dating apps hold significant economic worth.


Unlike Derrida's discussion of the Other when the Other is always toujours déjà, or à venir. It is these structural oppressions that we, as the Other, face. And this future should be a future that has already arrived. As a queer Asian artist, I am subjected to the double otherness of Chinese and Western art, and for an artist who may live in Europe for a long time in the future, how do I approach theory and practice?
The emergence of these apps has also led to the decline of traditional Chinese offline meeting places for gay men, like gay bathhouses. Many marginalized gay men, including older and married individuals, have lost their opportunities for sexual encounters. Additionally, these apps have transformed an inclusive, unconventional gay sex culture into a more exclusive one, contradicting the idea of "loving the ugliest gays".


So I wanted to look for a dynamic process, a process of continuous generation: for example, responding based on reality to generate theoretical thinking and reflection. I think the lowercase and plural (the others) in lowercase (theories) need to be contextualized through "gathering". This thesis is going to be a little attempt at "gathering". In a conversation between Mindy Seu and Legacy Russell, they mentioned that an essay anthology or digital index, in their presentations of new histories, might serve as maps. By aggregating nodes and markers, hard research, and scattered facts, these containers might surface suppressed voices among the connections they draw, as introduced by Saidiya Hartman’s notion of “critical fabulation.” Different from the traditional lexicon, I hope to recombine my living experience and these concepts, repeatedly incorporate personal subjectivity, and guide repeated, skipping, and rhizomatic reading with the help of hypertext. Lexicon with hypertext, as staying with trouble.
Every gay I know spends a significant amount of time on Grindr, and I can relate to that. The advertising slogans used by these apps are filled with neoliberal rhetoric advocating the benefits of remaining single and celebrating the limitless networked potential of romantic or sexual partners. The anticipation of casual sexual relationships in online dating and through casual encounters has increasingly turned sour, leaving behind more frustration than satisfaction.


== A for Anus ==
As the Western postmodern ideology encourages a constant pursuit of pleasure, the commodification of Otherness through diversity initiatives has led to a romanticized fantasy of the "primitive". The consumption of the Other in sexual "primitive" fantasy displaces and devalues their history. Research by Wade and Harpers indicates that sexual stereotypes influence partner selection, leading to racialized decision-making processes. This perpetuates racialized stereotyping in gay culture and affects the social acceptance of sexual discrimination. Virtual spaces provide anonymity leading to racist manifestations and microaggressions directed at marginalized groups.
'''Anal Castration'''
 
If I were to identify as a top, I would face resistance from other gay fantasies that associate hyper-masculinity with "tops." On the other hand, if I were to identify as a bottom, it would perpetuate the notion of "Asian feminine bottomhood" as a stubborn marker in my self-identification and disidentification. This would occur as I become part of the game, whether by participating in it or resisting it. For example, I might try to prove that Asians are not feminine or appropriate feminine bottomhood as an empowering act of “turning the master’s tool around to dismantle the master’s house”.
 
== S for STDs ==
STDs have always been treated special, my upbringing and environment never mentioned it to me. My sexual behavior until the age of 20 was associated with a fear of viruses, especially HIV.Leo Bersani's psychoanalytic description of the risks of sexual behavior in his article points directly to the issue of death as a risk of contracting a virus for which there was no widely available treatment or means of long-term survival at the time. In early epidemiological investigations in the United States, the distinctive viral characteristics of HIV and its association with gay men confirmed, in retrospect, the role of men in "biopropagation" in the broadest sense of the word, usually as opposed to viral transmission or bacterial maintenance. A similar view can be seen in the relationship between the words virality and virility.
 
I started reading Paul B. Preciado and Mel Y. Chen's articles on the virus starting with COVID-19, so I'm not afraid of it now. From June until now, I have been experiencing recurring STDs. The recurring infections are related to my marginalization, racialization, unstable life circumstances, and a weakened immune system. It was at the time of Venus retrograde that I participated in an erotic writing workshop. I found that the constant slight itching and pain in my anus and rectum did not connect me to "death" or "the grave," but rather gave me a persistent erotic sensation. This eroticism comes from the fact that behind the pain there is a kind of anal and rectal microbial and viral drama and rampant vitality. If Bersan's grave is the grave of “man” , what is “man“ in the midst of it all? If we consider Sylvia Wynter’s critique of the abiding biocentrism of orders of knowledge, which buttresses the colonially delineated “human” (Man), as well as the retention of a godly positioning while wearing the Enlightenment badge of secular science.This kind of “man” represents whiteness, masculinity, cis-ness, and ability. How do we think about refusing to confront this paradigm of our calling ourselves "human" in the face of viruses? How do we think about this pattern of calling ourselves "human" when we refuse to face the virus?
 
I chose the octopus rather than myself to appear in this drag show perhaps because I didn't just want to explore being Asian/Chinese, but more so being inhuman."Has the Queer Ever Been Human?" asked by Dana Luciano and Mel Y. Chen in GLQ Volume 21. Octopuses and viruses maintain their mysteries, opacities, and fundamental alterity, like the unstable category of queerness that refuses to be known.
 
== Q for Queerness ==
It wasn't until my freshman year at a British university that I truly came to terms with my homosexuality, despite my same-sex experiences beginning in high school. I engaged in sexual activities with some male classmates whose sexual orientation was unknown at high school. We didn't use terms like "gay" or "queer" to characterize this behavior. Relationships, let alone sex, were not allowed in Chinese high schoosl. Same-sex seems to be available as a way to explore the sexual self usually in the name of game, and male friendship.
 
Until I came to the Netherlands I had never defined myself as a "queer". I have lived most of my life near Chengdu (the gay capital in China) and Shanghai. In Hija de Perra's 2014 article ''Filthy Interpretations'' asks:“What is the future of this （queer) theory that runs the risk of being swallowed up and bought at a cheap price by the capitalist system?” In the last few years, the emergence of gay-friendly establishments and the introduction of multiculturalism in gentrifying areas have been showcased by the government as indicators of the country's progressiveness and a demonstration of its 'global' status. However, the Chinese government continues to make considerable efforts to suppress the LGBT community.
 
Meanwhile, I heard about Wai-Siam Hee's From Amorous Histories to Sexual Histories book from a Sinophone academic*.* Wai-Siam Hee examined the shift of Chinese males same sex from a traditional preference for sex art to marginalization by the state's pathological narrative of "sexual history" under the guise of "sexual science," and the influence of mainstream Western values propagating "homophobia" in China.
 
By using “queer” to define my work, I am neither suggesting that Chinese non-normative expressions of desire and gender are direct and outdated translations of those found and theorized in the Western world nor am I affirming the nativist response to the homogeneity and cultural imperialism represented by the globalization of queerness. Rather, I want to examine how interpretations of queer identities and theories, influenced by the unequal impacts of globalization, move between various settings with shared histories of non-conventional desires, gender presentations, and behaviors, and evolve and reconfigure in the procedure.
 
== O for Orifice 竅 ==
Both of my grandparents received daily traditional Chinese medicine treatment due to their illnesses, which cannot be cured by Western medicine. Their goal was to maintain a healthy body through traditional medicine, which focuses on keeping one's orifices open rather than blocked, unlike Western medicine's definition of health.
 
The term "竅" in Chinese has an etymological origin as a penetrable cave, and it is used as a technical word to refer to bodily orifices. It represents a space in which sexual differences converge into a superimposed opening. In Chinese traditional medicine, the human body is understood through its nine orifices, which are believed to be connected to its five inner organs.According to Yang Yu’s ''Shanju Xinyu'', Nine orifices include: the eyes, the ears, and the nostrils (each is double orifices); the mouth, the genitalia, and the anus (each is single orifice).
 
The penis is considered to be undifferentiated from the vagina. Anatomically, it contains a hollow space and serves as an orifice for the urethra.The penis becomes the same orifice as the anus. The homosexual infertile penis, which does not penetrate the vagina, is an organ with anal characteristics.
 
== Z for Zero ==
In Chinese gay slang, bottom is called 0, top is called 1. It is agreed that the numbers represented by each person in a couple must add up to 1. GLQ Volume 25 provides a thorough critique of the ontology of the couple ("1 + 1(0) = 1" model). I have also analyzed it within the terms anus, orifice, and so on. I'll end with a text I wrote one year ago:
the last number invented
 
<code>here I am, just an anus.
        an insertion port</code>
 
the invisible garden
 
the corner of our cruising
 
the unlit room in the club
 
becoming flowers and wild boars
 
making love with Arabs


In Chinese slang, the anus is humorously referred to as "chrysanthemum". I believe this is not just due to its similar appearance, but also because in traditional Chinese culture, the chrysanthemum is associated with "death" and "sacrifice ritual". Both are almost taboo topics in China and are not to be mentioned or touched. In my youth, I felt ashamed of my fantasy of wanting to be a "bottom", and feeling "guilty towards my parents", to the extent that I only started exploring my anus very late.
May '68 taught us to read the writing on the walls


My encounter with Paul B. Preciado was because he wrote a series of articles during COVID-19, published in the Chinese edition of Artforum. My undergraduate tutor, Luciano Zubillaga, in a film, linked the anus with a poem by Rilke (<nowiki>http://rainer-maria-rilke.de/020095dieuhrensonah.html</nowiki>). Here, Luciano explored the anus as a zero point for the deterritorialization of the heterosexual body, its pleasure serving as a metaphor for (sexual) communism.
                <code>there is no wine, candles, or roses</code>


On a sex date, bottoms will be asked for face, nude, and anus various photos, tops in many cases just provide a photo of a larger-than-average penis or a muscle photo. I generally don't like to casually enter the classification of "top", "versatile" and "bottom", but my phone album always has more photos of my own penis and muscles. Because subconsciously I find the "top self" more attractive than the "bottom self".
but everything flourishing in the darkness


Upon arriving in the Netherlands, I faced the violence of being racialized and eroticized. The sentiment of "no Asians!" has been adopted as a slogan of a white supremacist gay "community" that coerces Asian men to occupy an unsexy, undesirable position, seen as soft, effeminate, and poorly endowed—in other words, to occupy bottomhood. On Chinese social media Red, many Chinese gays and women have shown their disgust at the lack of masculinity of Asian men. They show that they don't hate "yellow fever" because they also only like white men, calling themselves "white fever". Within the Asian community, I have long been marginalized for behaviors such as dyeing my hair and wearing makeup.
                <code>the negative space of being</code>


= D for Depoliticize =
I am the moon, shadow, passivity.
The first time I encountered someone who identified as "queer" was a Dutch in PZI, and they frequently attend drag shows and similar events. In reality, I have very little interaction with such white “queer”. I struggle to comprehend how we both identify as queer, yet our lives or dating experiences are in two completely different worlds. They can easily hook up with white "daddies", and "muscular" men. They are always active on Grindr and well-liked. I am aware that they are not interested in people from other races like myself. They can openly display their true selves in front of their families as much as they desire, and they can consistently receive recognition or funding as "successful queer filmmakers".


Race is not a big part of the gay movement. Or they don't want to discuss it, they only care about sucking more dicks. Non-white gays being sexualized and fetishized is hardly ever brought up. Mepschen, Duyvendak, and Tonkens have brought up the Dutch gays' entanglement with neo-nationalist and normative citizenship discourses. Dutch gay identity does not threaten heteronormativity, but in fact, helps shape and reinforce the contours of ‘tolerant’ and ‘liberal’ Dutch national culture. That is, Dutch gay identity is depoliticized, and never be queer.
I am female, African, Middle Eastern, underclass, terrorist.


On the other hand, dating apps such as Grindr, sex parties, and Truvada PrEP are popular products among queer subjects. But these products also demonstrate that queerness and the term queer are not political. It was initially expressed by the activist group ACT UP to confront the political, social, and cultural marginalization of sexual minorities. However, it has become a neoliberal co-option of the term queer and queer masculinities. By positioning neoliberalism and queerness as historical counterparts, while the former propagated as an ideological dominance, it co-opted, commodified, depoliticized, and fragmented the latter.
put a pencil in the hand of a masturbator


= P for Penumbrae =
Couples are the greatest violence and empire.
'''Penumbrae Query Shadow'''


In the ancient Chinese text ''The Adjustment of Controversies'', the three existences of 罔兩(penumbra), 景(shadow), and 形(body) appear. This is regarded by contemporary East Asian queer scholars as a method of liberation from binary thinking.
                        <code>I refuse,
                          - the silent tango comes to an abrupt halt.</code>


I am a gay who does not attend parties or pride events. The only occasion I entered was in a sauna in Lisbon, where I was unable to feel any sexual arousal in the darkened maze. A man attempted to engage in sexual activity with me, accidentally spilling poppers on my leg. I felt embarrassed and promptly left. I am unable to fully come out to my parents, who have been aware for a long time but are still in denial. I do not fit the Western ideal of an Asian gay man. I had a suspicion that being so incapable of gay writing. I would have to get into those gay scenes.
                    <code>happy (not) together
        between being and (non) being  
                          (non) definition
                          (non) future
                          (non) ontological position </code>


But I have retained my darkness and melancholy. If those progressive, homonormative homosexuals are shadows, then I am a faint shadow on the edge of the shadows (penumbrae). Unlike Dutch gay men whose identities have been depoliticized, my struggle has a long way to go. I am an assemblage of experiences that have drifted and torn apart, which is why I need to be "gathering" here temporarily. I must ask the shadow why it continues to follow patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, and homonationalism.
                <code>between zero and one 
                before fiat lux 
                before language  
                before senses</code>


= S for STDs =
STDs have always been treated special, my upbringing and environment never mentioned it to me. My sexual behavior until the age of 20 was associated with a fear of viruses, especially HIV.Leo Bersani's psychoanalytic description of the risks of sexual behavior in his article points directly to the issue of death as a risk of contracting a virus for which there was no widely available treatment or means of long-term survival at the time. In early epidemiological investigations in the United States, the distinctive viral characteristics of HIV and its association with gay men confirmed, in retrospect, the role of men in "biopropagation" in the broadest sense of the word, usually as opposed to viral transmission or bacterial maintenance.
                <code>before the before 
                before after fiat lux 
                before after that before</code>


I started reading Paul B. Preciado and Mel Y. Chen's articles on the virus starting with COVID-19, so I'm not afraid of it now. From June until now, I have been experiencing recurring STDs. The recurring infections are related to my marginalization, racialization, unstable life circumstances, and a weakened immune system. It was at the time of Venus retrograde that I participated in an erotic writing workshop. I found that the constant slight itching and pain in my anus and rectum did not connect me to "death" or "the grave," but rather gave me a persistent erotic sensation. This eroticism comes from the fact that behind the pain there is a kind of anal and rectal microbial and viral drama and rampant vitality. If Bersan's grave is the grave of “man” , what is “man“ in the midst of it all? If we consider Sylvia Wynter's Sylvia Wynter’s critique of the abiding biocentrism of orders of knowledge, which buttresses the colonially delineated “human” (Man), as well as the retention of a godly positioning while wearing the Enlightenment badge of secular science.This kind of “man” represents whiteness, masculinity, cis-ness, and ability. How do we think about refusing to confront this paradigm of our calling ourselves "human" in the face of viruses? How do we think about this pattern of calling ourselves "human" when we refuse to face the virus?
                <code>no vagina
                no penis</code>


I chose the octopus rather than myself to appear in this drag show perhaps because I didn't just want to explore being Asian/Chinese, but more so being inhuman."Has the Queer Ever Been Human?" asked by Dana Luciano and Mel Y. Chen in GLQ Volume 21. Octopuses and viruses maintain their mysteries, opacities, and fundamental alterity, like the unstable category of queerness that refuses to be known.
                <code>hole  
                whole</code>

Latest revision as of 18:28, 30 November 2023

A for Anus

In Chinese slang, the anus is referred to as "chrysanthemum" due to their similar appearances. In Chinese culture, the chrysanthemum is associated with "death" and "sacrifice ritual". Both are almost taboo topics in China and are not to be mentioned or touched. In my youth, I felt ashamed of my fantasy of wanting to be a "bottom", and feeling "guilty towards my parents and country(China)", to the extent that I only started exploring my anus very late.

My encounter with Paul B. Preciado was because he wrote a series of articles during COVID-19, published in the Chinese edition of Artforum. My undergraduate tutor, Luciano Zubillaga, in a film, linked the anus with a poem by Rilke (http://rainer-maria-rilke.de/020095dieuhrensonah.html). Here, Luciano explored the anus as a zero point for the deterritorialization of the heterosexual body, its pleasure serving as a metaphor for (sexual) communism.

Upon arriving in the Netherlands, I faced the violence of being racialized and eroticized on Grindr. The sentiment of "no Asians!" has been adopted as a slogan of a white supremacist gay "community" that coerces Asian men to occupy an unsexy, undesirable position, seen as soft, effeminate, and poorly endowed—in other words, to occupy bottomhood. On Chinese social media Red, many Chinese gays and women have shown their disgust at the lack of masculinity of Asian men. They show that they don't hate "yellow fever" because they also only like white men, calling themselves "white fever". Within the Asian community, I have long been marginalized for behaviors such as dyeing my hair and wearing makeup.

The fear of femininity is the common link between misogyny and homophobia, reflected in various social and cultural practices. Beneath this hatred and anxiety, in the modern or colonial context, lies a stigmatized anus, demonized as immoral and associated with transgression or stupidity. Asians and the anus are seen as the opposition of whiteness and the phallus, blacks as bottoms are seen as devalued and enslaved, and the West is simultaneously intertwined with racism and homophobia as aversion to the anus is transferred to the position of the subject of life. Revisiting Paul B. Preciado's notion of "anal castration" is necessary:

The boys-of-castrated-anus established a community of what they called City, State, Fatherland, whose power and administrative authority excluded all those bodies whose anus remained open: women are doubly perforated as a result of their anuses and vaginas [with] their entire body transformable into a uterine cavity capable of housing future citizens; however also the bodies of faggots, which the power was not able to castrate; bodies that repudiated what others would consider anatomic evidence and that creates an aesthetic of life from this mutation.

Preciado has challenged the focus on the penis in Freudian theory by introducing the concept of "anal castration," questioning the validity of "castration anxiety" and "penis envy." The anus of Asian men is seen as a tool for white penis pleasure during sex, but it does not produce pleasure in itself.Challenging white dominance in sex requires a re-examination of the anus and its pleasures.

G for Grindr

In European countries, gay male cruising has been completely transformed by capitalism into Grindr, where it has become focused on cruising for money. Almost no trace remains of whatever anti-capitalist ethos there once was in cruising. It appears that a similar trend is rapidly emerging in China as well, as gay dating apps hold significant economic worth.

The emergence of these apps has also led to the decline of traditional Chinese offline meeting places for gay men, like gay bathhouses. Many marginalized gay men, including older and married individuals, have lost their opportunities for sexual encounters. Additionally, these apps have transformed an inclusive, unconventional gay sex culture into a more exclusive one, contradicting the idea of "loving the ugliest gays".

Every gay I know spends a significant amount of time on Grindr, and I can relate to that. The advertising slogans used by these apps are filled with neoliberal rhetoric advocating the benefits of remaining single and celebrating the limitless networked potential of romantic or sexual partners. The anticipation of casual sexual relationships in online dating and through casual encounters has increasingly turned sour, leaving behind more frustration than satisfaction.

As the Western postmodern ideology encourages a constant pursuit of pleasure, the commodification of Otherness through diversity initiatives has led to a romanticized fantasy of the "primitive". The consumption of the Other in sexual "primitive" fantasy displaces and devalues their history. Research by Wade and Harpers indicates that sexual stereotypes influence partner selection, leading to racialized decision-making processes. This perpetuates racialized stereotyping in gay culture and affects the social acceptance of sexual discrimination. Virtual spaces provide anonymity leading to racist manifestations and microaggressions directed at marginalized groups.

If I were to identify as a top, I would face resistance from other gay fantasies that associate hyper-masculinity with "tops." On the other hand, if I were to identify as a bottom, it would perpetuate the notion of "Asian feminine bottomhood" as a stubborn marker in my self-identification and disidentification. This would occur as I become part of the game, whether by participating in it or resisting it. For example, I might try to prove that Asians are not feminine or appropriate feminine bottomhood as an empowering act of “turning the master’s tool around to dismantle the master’s house”.

S for STDs

STDs have always been treated special, my upbringing and environment never mentioned it to me. My sexual behavior until the age of 20 was associated with a fear of viruses, especially HIV.Leo Bersani's psychoanalytic description of the risks of sexual behavior in his article points directly to the issue of death as a risk of contracting a virus for which there was no widely available treatment or means of long-term survival at the time. In early epidemiological investigations in the United States, the distinctive viral characteristics of HIV and its association with gay men confirmed, in retrospect, the role of men in "biopropagation" in the broadest sense of the word, usually as opposed to viral transmission or bacterial maintenance. A similar view can be seen in the relationship between the words virality and virility.

I started reading Paul B. Preciado and Mel Y. Chen's articles on the virus starting with COVID-19, so I'm not afraid of it now. From June until now, I have been experiencing recurring STDs. The recurring infections are related to my marginalization, racialization, unstable life circumstances, and a weakened immune system. It was at the time of Venus retrograde that I participated in an erotic writing workshop. I found that the constant slight itching and pain in my anus and rectum did not connect me to "death" or "the grave," but rather gave me a persistent erotic sensation. This eroticism comes from the fact that behind the pain there is a kind of anal and rectal microbial and viral drama and rampant vitality. If Bersan's grave is the grave of “man” , what is “man“ in the midst of it all? If we consider Sylvia Wynter’s critique of the abiding biocentrism of orders of knowledge, which buttresses the colonially delineated “human” (Man), as well as the retention of a godly positioning while wearing the Enlightenment badge of secular science.This kind of “man” represents whiteness, masculinity, cis-ness, and ability. How do we think about refusing to confront this paradigm of our calling ourselves "human" in the face of viruses? How do we think about this pattern of calling ourselves "human" when we refuse to face the virus?

I chose the octopus rather than myself to appear in this drag show perhaps because I didn't just want to explore being Asian/Chinese, but more so being inhuman."Has the Queer Ever Been Human?" asked by Dana Luciano and Mel Y. Chen in GLQ Volume 21. Octopuses and viruses maintain their mysteries, opacities, and fundamental alterity, like the unstable category of queerness that refuses to be known.

Q for Queerness

It wasn't until my freshman year at a British university that I truly came to terms with my homosexuality, despite my same-sex experiences beginning in high school. I engaged in sexual activities with some male classmates whose sexual orientation was unknown at high school. We didn't use terms like "gay" or "queer" to characterize this behavior. Relationships, let alone sex, were not allowed in Chinese high schoosl. Same-sex seems to be available as a way to explore the sexual self usually in the name of game, and male friendship.

Until I came to the Netherlands I had never defined myself as a "queer". I have lived most of my life near Chengdu (the gay capital in China) and Shanghai. In Hija de Perra's 2014 article Filthy Interpretations asks:“What is the future of this （queer) theory that runs the risk of being swallowed up and bought at a cheap price by the capitalist system?” In the last few years, the emergence of gay-friendly establishments and the introduction of multiculturalism in gentrifying areas have been showcased by the government as indicators of the country's progressiveness and a demonstration of its 'global' status. However, the Chinese government continues to make considerable efforts to suppress the LGBT community.

Meanwhile, I heard about Wai-Siam Hee's From Amorous Histories to Sexual Histories book from a Sinophone academic*.* Wai-Siam Hee examined the shift of Chinese males same sex from a traditional preference for sex art to marginalization by the state's pathological narrative of "sexual history" under the guise of "sexual science," and the influence of mainstream Western values propagating "homophobia" in China.

By using “queer” to define my work, I am neither suggesting that Chinese non-normative expressions of desire and gender are direct and outdated translations of those found and theorized in the Western world nor am I affirming the nativist response to the homogeneity and cultural imperialism represented by the globalization of queerness. Rather, I want to examine how interpretations of queer identities and theories, influenced by the unequal impacts of globalization, move between various settings with shared histories of non-conventional desires, gender presentations, and behaviors, and evolve and reconfigure in the procedure.

O for Orifice 竅

Both of my grandparents received daily traditional Chinese medicine treatment due to their illnesses, which cannot be cured by Western medicine. Their goal was to maintain a healthy body through traditional medicine, which focuses on keeping one's orifices open rather than blocked, unlike Western medicine's definition of health.

The term "竅" in Chinese has an etymological origin as a penetrable cave, and it is used as a technical word to refer to bodily orifices. It represents a space in which sexual differences converge into a superimposed opening. In Chinese traditional medicine, the human body is understood through its nine orifices, which are believed to be connected to its five inner organs.According to Yang Yu’s Shanju Xinyu, Nine orifices include: the eyes, the ears, and the nostrils (each is double orifices); the mouth, the genitalia, and the anus (each is single orifice).

The penis is considered to be undifferentiated from the vagina. Anatomically, it contains a hollow space and serves as an orifice for the urethra.The penis becomes the same orifice as the anus. The homosexual infertile penis, which does not penetrate the vagina, is an organ with anal characteristics.

Z for Zero

In Chinese gay slang, bottom is called 0, top is called 1. It is agreed that the numbers represented by each person in a couple must add up to 1. GLQ Volume 25 provides a thorough critique of the ontology of the couple ("1 + 1(0) = 1" model). I have also analyzed it within the terms anus, orifice, and so on. I'll end with a text I wrote one year ago: 

the last number invented

here I am, just an anus.

       an insertion port

the invisible garden

the corner of our cruising

the unlit room in the club

becoming flowers and wild boars

making love with Arabs

May '68 taught us to read the writing on the walls

               there is no wine, candles, or roses

but everything flourishing in the darkness

               the negative space of being

I am the moon, shadow, passivity.

I am female, African, Middle Eastern, underclass, terrorist.

put a pencil in the hand of a masturbator

Couples are the greatest violence and empire.

                        I refuse,

                         - the silent tango comes to an abrupt halt. 



                   happy (not) together

       between being and (non) being 

                         (non) definition 

                         (non) future 

                         (non) ontological position  



               between zero and one 

               before fiat lux 

               before language  

               before senses 



               before the before 

               before after fiat lux 

               before after that before 



               no vagina 

               no penis



               hole  

               whole
Retrieved from "https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/index.php?title=Graduation_Thesis_Muyang&oldid=254766"